DIY No-Sew Personalized Name Garland

March 23, 2018

A DIY nursery doesn’t always mean you have to break out the sewing machine! Using a hack on Spoonflower’s Fill-a-Yard® feature, Stefanie of The Style Safari is showing just how easy it is to create a custom name garland – no sewing required. The hardest part? Deciding which designs to use from the Spoonflower Marketplace of more than 650,000 designs!

Stefanie: I’m thrilled to share this tutorial as the ‘secret ingredient’ to my baby’s nursery. Since no one but my husband and I know our baby’s name yet, this has been a fun project to keep quiet! I absolutely wanted to decorate my daughter’s nursery with some fun wall art, but I tend to be very picky on art, and for a baby girl nursery, I wanted everything to feel personalized and special. Enter this easy custom name garland tutorial, where you can hang the letters in any way you choose, or opt to display them more like blocks on a shelf for more versatility. This is a great way to use Spoonflower’s Fill-a-Yard® feature, so have fun mixing up some of your favorite prints from the Spoonflower community!

5” wood letters from local craft store or make your own with heavy duty cardboard

Scissors

Batting

Hot Glue

Stapler

Ribbon, rope or embroidery floss to hang the letters

Create your Fill-a-Project

For this project I only needed 1 yard of fabric but I wanted to mix-and-match my prints instead of sticking with one design. The 1 yard cheater quilt template was perfect because it allowed me to choose all the designs I wanted without having to order individual yards or fat quarters of each design.

Pro tip: My project required squares larger than 6″ but I didn’t have enough letters in Marina’s name to need 2 yards. By filling 4 squares (two on the top and two below) with the same design, I was able to create nine 12″ x 12″ squares instead of 6″ squares!

Cut your Fabric and Batting

Trace and cut out the batting in the shapes of your letters.

Cut out your fabric squares and lay them out to identify the order of the patterns.

Trace 2 versions of each letter:

1 version with ¾” surrounding the outside border of the letter. Do not cut away any excess fabric inside the letters, instead, cut small slits toward the points to fold around the letter.

1 version in the exact same shape for the back of your letter (NOTE: trace the back side of the letter for non-reversible shapes!)

Pro tip: Start with an easy letter like I, L, T, O, S, A or C to get used to the process!

Use a small amount of hot glue to secure the batting to the front of the letter.

Flip the letter over and use a small amount of hot glue to secure the letter and batting to the wrong side of the front fabric piece. Make sure all your cut points are lined up with the angles and curve of your letter.

Starting on the inner most part of each letter, pull the fabric bits securely and gently hot glue to side of letter, then to the back of letter. Work in opposition, so that your fabric is pulled taught on both sides of the letter. Press out hot glue clumps with a paperclip or other small tool as you work to avoid bulges.

Hot glue and fold the side edges in, followed last by the top and bottom of each letter.

Hot glue the second fabric letter onto the back of your letter to cover up the messy back!

Cut your ribbon or cord the desired length to hang in the nursery.

Use a heavy duty stapler to attach the ribbon/cord to the back of each letter and hang. Alternatively, place on shelf or hang on a wall with brackets and nails for a different display.

Stand back and admire your work! Feeling a little overwhelmed at the thought of creating a curated collection from the Marketplace? Get a head start and see what our collections the Spoonflower community has created here.

Stefanie Schoen is a blogger, designer and avid sewist who loves mixing prints and playing with color. She lives outside of San Francisco, where she enjoys wine tasting with her husband, playing tennis and snowboarding, and making the perfect matcha latte. Stefanie blogs about her latest travels, fashions and DIY projects weekly and can be found over at TheStyleSafari.com